The Ledgers of Baldr: 4E253-4E299
Actions Stavengar Guillaume, after purging the Senate of toadies and the corrupt, calls the Centuriate Assembly together in Stavengar. He calls for a census to be taken, local leaders to be invited to take part in the new Stavengaran Senate, and a new codex of laws to be ratified, outlining the Senatorial requirements and the system for the election of Consuls. (1. culture). Guillaume also invites Vicengrin to these proceedings, to proclaim themselves co-consuls for the first year, upon which Vicengrin is eligible for reelection and Guillaume shall take his place as monarch, with veto powers that can be overridden by the Senate. (2. culture). Realizing the world is still a dangerous place, however, Guillaume calls for Legio I to be recreated, under the command of a refugee from the Reich, known as Von Ludendwarf. (3. army). Finally, intending to honor the treaty discussed many years before, Guillaume orders scientists to begin research on Wyrdium taken from the fissure, and its possible link to the Age of Immortality. (4. research) Kaz'ur In order to facilitate the growth of magic in the land, and to attain greater understanding, the Council votes to construct a new great academy, the first of the things being dedicated to magical study and proliferation. (Research bonus to magic rolls, actions 1-2). A new expedition is launched into the Southeast, seeking more territory for the continually arriving refugees and immigrants. (expansion, - 10 Wealth, action 3) While escorting the immigrants, the scouting legion comes across a grand ruined fortress on the outskirts of the territories, and request permission to restore it for their own use. (Defense, action 4). Ashelani The Queen, displeased with Her prior unsuccessful expansions, withdraws Len-Scholus from the Rift and sends the intrepid explorer to the mouth of the southern bay to organize the expedition. A single massive chute worm is sent to the eastern lake in an attempt to speed delivery of workers and materials with which to establish a foothold. (expansion 1&2, -20 wealth). Meanwhile, the current predicament revolving around eternal life leads the Queen to two conclusions. The first relates directly to the continuous growth of the Ashelani themselves. As the Queen grows ever more bulbous, She begins to panic, realizing that Her exoskeleton and organs are unable to support their own weight. As She suffers, She realizes that this will in time kill or immobilize all of her people. So She begins development of a new hormone which will trigger molting of the Ashelani carapace every few months, removing the upper size limit on Her people. (Gigantic Military research, get! 3). The second comes with the realization that controlling the hive mind is becoming quite taxing as the population grows without limit. To remedy this, She begins mixing an above average number of protoqueens into Her birthing cycles, which are resigned to use as nothing more than additional brain cells. This allows the Queen to focus more readily on certain tasks by setting the day to day hive activities on the metaphorical back burner. (Bonus to research-research, get! 4) Hall of the Five Gojac notices that his defective creations don't die of heart palpitations the way he's fairly sure they should. He'd heard about the immortality shit but he hadn't realized what a bonanza this could be. Basically all of the constraints concerning cerebral brain flow, organ failure, and blood loss are just gone. Gojac starts the show off with a model of the Shrine Titan he shelved due to inability to reliably breath. (1:Titan 2.0 gogogo) Garma gladly accepts the 15 gold from Mulakka as if it were a gift from her senile grandmother. With it, Garma gets back to working on the chronostasis field around the borders that was going to keep the hunger out. The hunger's pause just gives her more time. (2, spend 30 gold) Kellus spends his time revisiting a few of the elemental gods' feats that he cheated on. He attempts to move a real mountain, and then attempts to drain and then refill the seas. (3) Rucahn returns to some lost Ahazuaran territory in the hopes that the people in the graveyards have come back to life. They haven't. (4: expand) Mu'lakka Some shipbuilders, jobs temporarily unneeded due to the impracticality of making ships, wonder what good prayer might do after all. They go to the obsidian shrine and begin praying to the god of the angry volcano, praying for any number of things. They pray for him to relieve their troubles in this difficult time, in as safe a way as possible. They pray for him to, if necessary, bring death back to the world - though preferably onto people far away and not anyone the shipbuilders know. This continues for some time as they attempt to find anything that works. (Magic? 1) Colonists on Manuk, farms overgrown and livestock worthless, decide there's nothing better to do and attempt to find more land to settle. They cross a short span of desert and scout out the land just south of the Derultian homeland. Another party heads south, through the jungles and forests in the direction of Legaros. (Expansion 2&3) Making the most of the situation, a small group of gardeners has taken to the practice of tending and shaping the infinitely-growing plants into vast and complicated shapes, representing animals, ships, and even people. These are transplanted and placed across the Mu'lakkan lands as a reminder that the curse is perhaps not all bad, and beauty can still be made from it (Culture 4) Ignati The sun rises, and Chimeryx awakes. As usual, his butler enters his room with a platter of breakfast, but today the dragon-lord looks with disbelief at the presented meal. "Butler, with all due respect, what the hell is this shit?" Chark'l'n swallows nervously. "In accordance with the new philosophies you've been promoting, the cooks thought it might be a good idea to start serving more, erm, *enlightened* food. They've taken meat completely off the menu, as you can see... today they're preparing organic lentil-kale harmony salads served with condescension dressing. It's supposed to taste especially good when staring in askance at someone eating a less environmentally conscientious meal." Disgusted, Chimeryx waves the butler away, leaving his breakfast untouched. He walks to his window to look out onto the military parade grounds; a favorite distraction of his. To his dismay, the vast green field has been taken over by a huge crowd of ponderously obese Ignati, all of whom seem to be trying to contort themselves into the same flexible pose. As he watches, one of the men-previously-likened-to-dragons loses his balance and begins to slowly roll down a grassy slope, knocking over some of his fellow participants. "I can't take much more of this," he mutters to himself. "We need to finish up this Hunger research, and fast." research x4 Legaros After a long sulk, Emperor Basoferyx has decreed that whomever brings him a cure to the worlds longevity, and enables him to begin executions and public torture at will again, will be greatly rewarded and almost certainly NOT publicly tortured and executed. Scientists and inventors all over Legaros begin frantically researching for death. (Research 1). Meanwhile, on the side of the government that actually does things, the Trade minister has heard rumor of a Mul'akkan merchant party headed for Legaros. Seeing this as a golden opportunity for trade and diplomatic relations that they have been searching for for so long, he sends out his own party to find them and escort them safely in (Income 2 and Culture 3). The remaining mad priests in the jungle abandon their search for a cure, and instead seek to establish a new order on a nearby island (Expansion 4). Results: Stavengar: 16, 12, 1, 10 The senate, as per Guillaume’s instructions, has been carefully weeded of corrupt and ill-minded senators, affording your country a sound and just government once again (+2 culture). The famed Vicengrin of the formerly sovereign DPF steps into the senate chamber in Stavengar for the first time since the signing of the treaty that ended the war one hundred years ago. Those years, it seems, have taken their toll on him mentally, and he is not nearly as sharp as he once was. While Guillaume had taken precautions to make sure no dwarf over the age of seventy could serve in the Senate, he has already been sworn to give Vicengrin a pivotal role in the new government. A deal is a deal, especially to the people of Stavengar, and he is signed on as consul, one of the tiny glimmers of future stability your country has been yearning for since the lengthy occupation and reconstruction period (+1 culture). Raising an army, however, proves to be more than Guillaume bargained for, and opposition in the Senate is fierce—many feel it may not be prudent and see it as a possible aggressive action that could aggravate the Ashik to the north, who have just recently left the country. “Why raise an army,” many are saying, “when there can never be another war again?” The resulting Senate battle is humiliating for Guillaume and his coalition, and raising armies in the future will be a hot-button issue (roll of 17 needed to raise next army). Scant amounts of wyrdium trickles in from caravans headed west, and your scientists are puzzled as to how this metal could have anything to do with the immortality dilemma. Its physical properties are extensively documented, however. The metal grows in perfect spheres and is seemingly impossible to forge into anything. If beaten out into a different shape, the metal will gradually meld into a spherical shape again over the course of a few days. Kaz’ur: 4, 12, 3, 13 The grand academy for mages has yet to be built—your government is instead focusing on the refugee problem. Your country currently has the lowest population density of any of the civilized nations, and, unlike most other countries, there is still interior space for farmland. Thousands upon thousands of deathless refugees, mad with hunger and permanently sickened with various plagues, are currently demanding to be let inside the walls of your fabled paradise. The imposing height of your tower has also served to draw individuals from all over Ardunne, mainly from formerly-occupied Stavengar, but some hailing from as far as the Reich (1 more success needed). The hostile valley to the southeast of your nation prove inhospitable to the myriad of refugees, and while there are no deaths due to hostile terrain, many pilgrims are trapped in the treacherous black crags and sinkholes that pepper the landscape, and are unable to be rescued. Their wrenching screams echo through the wastes all day and all night. The expedition, needless to say, is a failure (-10 wealth). Much more promising, though, is the haunting abandoned fortress that juts out on a rocky promontory right at the edge of the valley, suspended precariously by horizontal stone pillars of archaic design over the unfathomable depths of the fissure itself. A circular fortress with a sort of terraced courtyard in the center, its most defining interior feature is what looks to be a great brass telescope of some kind in said courtyard, pointed straight down through the glass floor, peering into the impenetrable darkness below. While a bit out of the way of your patrols, the fortress is now manned by Ashik soldiers and will prove invaluable in case of an ambush from the east, as it overlooks not only the fissure but also the entire wasteland, and is accessible only by a retractable stone bridge. The mysterious fortress complex has been named the Palace of Dreams (+2 defense). The Ashelani Dominion: 18, 10, 1, 8 Thousands of your warriors vomited up from the ground descend into the southern jungle, carving out preliminary nests and establishing underground resin exoskeletons for future hives. Within a few years, the land is thoroughly settled (-20 wealth, +6 income). Although your people have the most controlled and regimented breeding process of all the world’s species, overpopulation is a huge problem at home, even more so than abroad. Carcinos and carcinoborn are not grown in pods, like the rest of your hive, and continue to breed mostly unchecked. The big problem with this is that these organisms still occupy a space in your hivemind, which, even with the assistance of the protoqueens, is becoming vastly more and more inefficient and garbled by the day. The research into molting goes incredibly poorly—the sixty foot tall, ten-limbed beasts you create are unresponsive to the hivemind’s commands and are now rampaging through the jungle, most of them burrowing underground and demolishing entire hives. The inhabitants of these hives are torn limb from limb and devoured—but their presence in the hive mind continues long after their physical bodies have been reduced to chunks of fecal matter. The revolting dung of the giant beasts undulates and gibbers in unbearable pain, unable to die (you have unleashed revolting giant carnivorous insects across Ardunne and will reap the diplomatic repercussions of that, -1 culture). The spare protoqueens are kept in the central hive antechamber in close proximity to the Queen herself, and their added help has been the only thing that has averted the predicted shattering of the shared hive mind at stress points during this period. If the hive mind were to shatter, your queen estimates that your people would be little more than ferocious animals, and your millions of inhabitants would spread to all the corners of Ardunne to gorge upon whatever they could find. She estimates the date of “The Shattering,” as it were, to be about twenty or thirty years in the future. The Halls of the Five: 18, 17, 11, 21 The originally proposed “alpha-class titan” was so massive that its lungs could not physically intake enough air to keep its blood oxygenated, but now, this is not an issue. They dwarf the size of a regular shrine titan twice over, and a single one of them is large enough to run from one end of your nation to the other in a single day, vaulting over entire rivers and canyons. Only one has been constructed, and it stands dormant outside Gojac’s castle, fettered to the earth itself by impossibly large chains of iron. The creature’s thick fur is a magnificent red-dappled golden sheen, and its horns, dissimilar to the bull-like horns of the other titans, are tremendous antler-like protrusions (+1 to expansion, +1 military). The chronostasis field is going well, as far as these sorts of things go, although its mere presence has opened up countless alternate realities that Kellus finds are significantly slowing down his coveted casting time (1 more success needed). Kellus is not nearly powerful to drain and refill the seas—such a displacement of water would need to held in an gravity orb so large that it would block out the sun’s light. He does, however, flirt with the idea of moving a mountain around, until he realizes that he has no real place to set it down. It’s not that he’s incapable, he just can’t be bothered right now. The expansion, though, is fabulously successful, although none of the people in graveyards seem to have come back to life, the ash waste houses the ruins of your civilization’s greatest city—a towering ziggurat of white marble and blue-speckled granite. Ziggurats were big back then, which Rucahn laments as a rueful architectural choice. There is mana to spare here, as well as artifacts galore—the most intriguing of which is a great golden mechanism of unknown function that takes up three stories of a stone building (-10 wealth, +10 income). The Mu’lakka Lands: 8, 14, 13, 13 Your people, as it turns out, are not very magically gifted, much to Rak’min’s dismay. The Great Chief has entertained hundreds of so-called mages in his palace, but no real magical prowess is ever displayed. Your people, it seems, will have to survive off their own ingenuity and monetary savvy, as they have done in the past. Continually growing, the elderly Rak’min is now just shy of 9 feet tall. The desert is a no-go—further north, the heat becomes so unbearable that humans subjected to it blacken with desert burns and fall into comatose states. Some humans are able to hash it out in Derultian outlaw territory, sheltered indoors by the robots, although they have no way to make a living at all, and are fed nothing at all. Water in the desert is exorbitantly expensive, and there is literally no organic food at all to be found. In the south, the expansion further inland is a success, and your colonists are close to border contact with the small, neutral nation of Legaros (+5 income, -20 wealth). The plant sculptures on your southern islands seem to have aroused public interest (+1 culture), although the average Mu’lakkan, it seems, grows more and more jaded and shiftless as they age, until nothing at all seems important to them at all. When compared to the aging struggles that other species are facing, Rak’min reminds himself that a lifetime of perpetual boredom and ennui really isn’t the worst thing in the world, but every day he finds it harder and harder to care about the fate of his people in general. The Ignati Tribes: 2, 12, 12, 2 “There are no gods but dragonborn,” Chimeryx mutters to himself day in and day out. The phrase has become his mantra, his guiding light. He has noticed that he has been growing less and less angry as the years have gone on. He has lost track of how old he is, something like one hundred and fifty, now. Birthdays were no longer important. He lost the use of his wings ages ago, but he doesn’t really mind. The sight of the obese Ignati that once filled him with rage now leaves him feeling merely saddened for the fate of his race. He himself, after all, no longer has the body that he used to. Ignati culture, over the past hundred years, has lost touch with the warrior way and become completely stagnant. There is no guiding principle anymore, and the calm feeling of racial superiority and pride that your people once stoked has subsided. The closest thing your nation has to a philosophy are the ideals of the Blue Sage, who preaches that if enough Ignati talk about their feelings with one another at great length, the worldsoul will understand and alter itself physically to fit their needs, manifesting in a happier life for everyone. This leads to large gatherings of obese dragonborn blubbering and sobbing loudly in public places. Hygh Baelric has stopped publishing his racist journals. The capitol of your nation is a simpering pit of half-assed, hedonistic chicanery, and the initial enthusiasm for meditation has gone away. The tradition is still kept in some parts, but most Ignati are happy to eat their cares away. Your people are no longer afraid of the Hunger—many have never heard of it or have forgotten all about the dark legacy of the war (no successes, 50 years of fatass). Legaros: 20, 19, 2, 15 Famed Ashik diviner Hawafi al-Saud, who has not used the rune on his head to cast a single spell for forty years, finally expends all of his power in a prayer to the Great Father, and curiously, now seems to be engaged in a conversation with someone, although he and his aides are the only ones present. He speaks not in the language of the Ashik, but in a strange, lilting tongue that no one has ever heard of. Basoferyx is brought before him immediately, and Hawafi has been talking for three straight days. A transcript of the entire one-sided conversation is being authored as it happens. When he finally breaks out of his reverie, he narrates his story. On the first day, he talked with the west wind, on the second day, he talked with the devil, and on the third day he talked with death himself. According to Hawafi, the curse of undeath placed upon the world is not a divine contrivance, but it is one engineered by mortal hands. The point of origin of the curse lies somewhere north or east of Legaros. That the tiny and largely insignificant fledgling empire of Legaros has managed to make by far the most progress on researching undeath is a fact that sits rather sorely with the rest of the world. Relations with Mu’lakkans to the north seem to be going well, and it is apparent that they bear you no ill will, although your escort is greeted with apathy and seeming indifference by the foreigners. No official trade agreements have been drafted (RP in separate post) but your countrymen make a small living selling cut stone to them (+5 income). The eastern island chain proves to be safe ground for the Legaran church, still unpopular on the secularly-oriented mainland (+6 income, -10 wealth). Basoferyx’s “immortal dynasty” still oppresses the church at every opportunity, and the Ignati still bear the age-old suspicion of organized religion that characterizes their race. The emperor himself is hugely obese and takes indulgent baths every day, leaving matters of state largely in the hands of the two members of the Triumvirate that he ousted a hundred years ago in the revolution. Category:The Ledgers of Baldr